Manitoba Justice Minister Cameron Friesen is reminding Manitobans that unanswered, unpaid fines relating to COVID-19 enforcement in the province will result in more penalties, like being prohibited from renewing driver’s licences or vehicle registrations.
He made the comments as the department wasn’t able to provide figures to Global News on the number of people facing this kind of discipline.
Unpaid ticket fines for Public Health Act offences are also sent to a collections agency for further action, Friesen added in a written statement.
“No one is ‘getting away.’ We have a proper process and procedure that is being followed,” Friesen said. “I urge Manitobans to follow public health orders and protect each other.”
The Manitoba government’s latest set of public health orders came into effect early Tuesday, largely targeting indoor and outdoor gathering sizes when unimmunized but eligible-to-be-vaccinated people are present.
Manitoba’s chief provincial public health officer Dr. Brent Roussin says the province is heading for a significant fourth wave if Manitobans don’t play their part in reducing transmission of the virus that causes COVID-19.
“These orders are not going to have much (of) an effect unless there’s adherence to them, and part of adherence may have to be enforcement,” Roussin said. “(We are) in a trajectory right now that could take us to a place where we’ll see quite a significant amount of strain on our health-care system unless we change it.”
According to the province’s online COVID-19 enforcement dashboard, between Sept. 27 and Oct. 3, enforcement officials added 19 tickets to reach an overall tally of 2,186 issued since April 9, 2020: 14 to businesses, two to individuals failing to wear a mask at $296 each, and three to people failing to self-isolate at $1,296 each.
As of Monday afternoon, the Justice Department said it had collected $264,254 so far, whereas the online dashboard says $3,119,190 worth of fines had been issued up until Sunday.
This amounts to the province having collected less than 10 per cent of more than $3.1 million from COVID-19-related fines since enforcement began last year.
The Canadian Press previously reported the province had collected a similar proportion of fines back in April this year.
Friesen says a person is default convicted in provincial court if they don’t respond within the response period after being issued a ticket, which means they accumulate another $100 to their fine.
Manitoba Justice wasn’t able to provide Global News with data on the number of Manitobans who’ve appealed their tickets or the number of people blocked from getting or renewing their driver’s licence or vehicle registration.
“We cannot advise on the timelines for work led by outside agencies,” a spokesperson said Tuesday. “While Manitoba Justice collects various data sets for internal purposes, we are unable to provide a breakdown specific to the data you requested.”
Around 3,300 officials can enforce public health orders in the province, a spokesperson said Monday, adding that they’ve generally focused on areas with high transmission rates.
“The Manitoba government has endeavoured to be as responsive as possible to this evolving situation and continues to adjust its strategies and tactics as needed.”
— with files from The Canadian Press
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